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UK gives go-ahead for human cloning

27 February 2002

By Emma Young

UK scientists have been given the final go-ahead to conduct limited human cloning.

In December 2000, the British government passed a law permitting the cloning of early embryos to provide stem cells for experimentation and medical treatments. But such research was put on hold, awaiting the conclusions of a House of Lords select committee report on stem cell research.

In that report, published on Wednesday, the committee approved both research on embryonic stem cells, with a view to developing new treatments for disease, and therapeutic cloning, involving the cloning of embryos up to 14 days old. It also backed calls for the establishment of a UK stem cell bank.

Therapeutic cloning could provide treatment cells that would not be rejected by the patient. But the committee thinks cloning of early embryos is more likely to be used as a research tool, to better understand the behaviour of adult stem cells and how they might be manipulated. There is “a powerful case for its use”, the committee says.

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The way is now clear for the regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, to issue licences for such work.

Embryo or adult

Scientists hope that stem cells could be used to treat a wide variety of diseases, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Anti-abortion campaigners argue that adult stem cells could be as effective as similar cells from embryos. But the committee disagreed.

“There is a clear scientific case for continued research on embryonic stem (ES) cells, in order that the full potential of adult stem cells for therapy can be realised and because it is likely that some therapies will need to use ES cells,” the report says.

“Recent research on adult stem cells also holds promise of therapies and research on them should be strongly encouraged by funding bodies and the government,” it says. But “to ensure maximum medical benefit it is necessary to keep both routes to therapy open at present, since neither alone is likely to meet all therapeutic needs.”

Fundamental research on ES cells should provide new insights on how to isolate, grow and differentiate adult stem cells into new types of cell, it says. But the committee says the government should undertake a further review scientific progress in the field towards the end of the decade.

Cell bank

The UK Department of Health has previously called for a stem cell bank to be established. This bank would hold all adult and embryonic stem cell lines generated in the UK. The committee has given strong support to this proposal.

“Before granting any new licence to establish human ES cell lines, the HFEA should satisfy itself that there are no existing ES cell lines in the bank suitable for the proposed research.”

In the US, publicly funded researchers are restricted to working only on existing US embryonic stem cell lines. Regulations in the UK are the most liberal in the world.

UK action group Comment on Reproductive Ethics says the committee’s conclusions were “a foregone conclusion”. It says&colon; “The conclusion we have reached after looking at the oral presentation of scientific evidence to the select committee is that it has been relentlessly biased towards the benefits of cell nuclear replacement and embryonic stem cell work.”